New Haven and Hartford put their heads together in a quest to “reinvent Latino philanthropy” in Connecticut and continue to help grassroots community helpers like Luz Gonzales (second from right in photo).
Tuesday evening was the first time that New Haven’s Progreso Latino Fund (PLF) and Hartford’s Latino Endowment Fund collaborated on an event. Billed as “Latinos in Philanthropy: A Community’s Coming of Age,” the forum drew more than 200 people to a reception at the Knights of Columbus Museum. The turnout and its range thrilled Frances Padilla (second from left in the photo), one of the founders of the PLF.
Click here, here, and here, for previous articles on the PLF, a trendsetting organization in the emerging field of Latino-focused philanthropy.
“There are 250,000 Latinos dispersed all over Connecticut,” Padilla said. “And although we’re in different places tonight there’s a cross-section of all these people from all over the state. We’ve broken geographical barriers. That’s good because we’re all working on the same issues — like education for our kids and affordable housing and health care.”
Luz Gonzales runs Camp Meechumak, a summer sleepover haven for about 80 kids who are from families affected by HIV/AIDS, and she’s a beneficiary of PLF funding. The agency she runs throughout the year in New Haven, Hispanos Unidos, is a substance abuse and mental health organization. Like most Latino organizations, is heavily dependent on grant-to-grant funding, often from government.
Enter the evening’s speaker Dr. Pablo Rodriguez, an early champion of AIDS clients in Rhode Island, community leader, and an advocate of more vigorous and professionalized Latino fundraising. “When Reagan cut the money that was lavished during the War on Poverty,” he said, “everyone went scrambling, and we followed the money, not the mission.”
He praised the magnanimous spirit of giving among Latinos: $67 billion a year, he said, is sent to home countries, for example, a lot of it to build schools and clinics. That’s not even formally counted as philanthropy. Also, more than 40 percent is sent to the church.
For private, modern Latino philanthropies to flourish, especially as a hedge against the vagaries of government funding, Rodriguez urged his colleagues not only to give more but to join boards.
“Currently, nationally, there are .05 percent Latinos on boards. And when I left one, it probably went down by half. We Latinos also don’t value development officers. We need to take our energy,” he said, “and change those things as we re-invent Latino philanthropy.”
The power of philanthropy, he added, is that it can fund research and then that helps frame and even set policy.
Both Connecticut endowment funds use their income to fund organizations serving Latino needs in New Haven and Hartford respectively. The PLF was founded by Frances and John Padilla and others and is administered through the Greater New Haven Community Foundation. The Latino Endowment Fund similarly is administered through the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving (HFPG). Both were established around 2003. They each have upwards of $100,000 in endowed funds, from some 60 or so donors each.
Padilla announced at the evening’s end that an anonymous donor just made a $10,000 gift to the PLF. That’s one of the largest, if not the largest, gifts the PLF has ever received. Whatever you give to the fund will be matched up to a total of $10,000. FOr more info visit this website or call Angel Fernandez-Chevero at 203 – 777-7072.
In addition to the two foundations, the forum was sponsored and organized by Arte, the Fair Haven-based Latino arts organization, whose founders Danny Diaz and Dave Greco were principals (in the photo at the top) in organizing the evening.
Other beneficiaries of Arte and the PLF include clarinetist Maria Polvo and trumpeter Kimberly Revolorio (pictured) and other members of the John Daniels School band, who entertained the philanthropists between speeches.